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The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers, breakthrough research, and policy innovation to address the most important challenges facing the United States.

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The President's Map

The (Inauguration) party’s over. It’s Day One, and President Obama now faces a sobering set of second-term challenges, which he laid out in his inaugural speech: swelling healthcare costs, an untenable deficit, a warming planet and a growing chasm between the rich and poor.

The good news: He can begin to tackle this slew of problems with one grand strategy. Of course, grand strategy is no panacea – but rather a map to a better America.

Patrick Doherty and the Smart Strategy Initiative have drafted such a map to guide the U.S. - and former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department Anne-Marie Slaughter (also a New America board member) endorsed the strategy in the Washington Post.

Slaughter reviewed the strategies of three think tanks, but Doherty’s came out ahead because it “offers specific prescriptions for how to rebuild” America’s policy foundations.

It already seems like the central tenet of Doherty’s strategy – sustainability and leadership on climate change - is aligned with President Obama’s second-term priority.

As Slaughter points out in CNN, the most important part of the president’s inauguration speech was his recommitment to the environment. “He spoke of leading a transition to sustainable energy resources, a national grand strategy that has recently been proposed by Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation, building on the proposal of a new strategic narrative by two military men working for Adm. Michael Mullen when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” she noted.